The 5 Cars That Wheeled Across the Moon

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) headed to the moon in June 2009 with a camera system and a suite of other instruments it would use to measure the surface. The LRO's high-resolution images would build maps far more detailed than those used by the Apollo missions. In fact, it even spotted the relics of those missions: rovers left by the Apollo and Soviet Luna missions in the 1960s and 1970s.

There are five cars on the moon, still sitting there 40 years after their heyday. The Soviets were the first to do it. In 1970, the Luna 17 spacecraft landed a remote-controlled, eight-wheeled, seven-foot-long car on the moon. Later, the U.S. one-upped the USSR by landing three manned vehicles on the surface. In 1971 and 1972 Apollo 15, 16, and 17 carried 10-foot-long LRVs (lunar roving vehicles). The final rover to land on the moon was from the Soviet Luna 21 mission in 1973.

On the earlier Apollo missions, astronauts on the moon had to pull wheeled carts full of equipment to drill and sample soil and set up cameras and antennae. The NASA rovers used mounts for equipment, and allowed the astronauts to venture farther away from their landing-module base camps. These rigs were vital to both the Soviet and U.S. space programs. Here's a deeper look at the five rovers that first landed on the surface of the moon and their missions.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/moon-mars/5-cars-that-wheeled-across-the-moon?src=rss

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